Get Rid of Garden Plants Bugs and Diseases part 3

Clever Tricks

A drop of mineral oil on corn silk will keep out worms. Apply to tip of each ear when silks begin to brown, with a medicine dropper, pump-type oil can with a long spout, or a plastic dishwashing detergent bottle. Do it a total of about three times, once every five or six days. What’s lazy about this, you wonder? When you harvest the corn, most of the silk will come off with the husk for worm-free and silk-free ears.

If you can prevent plant disease with good cultural practices, then you’ll never need to use extra time to fight them:

• Immediately after a rain, when plants are still wet, rest. That way, you won’t be in the garden, brushing up against plants and possibly spreading disease.
• Locate plants where they’ll have good air circulation and plenty of sunlight.
• Mulch. It not only saves weeding and watering, but prevents soil-borne diseases from being spread to plants by mud splashed up during rainstorms.
• Don’t throw diseased plant material into the compost pile.
• If you’re pruning fruit trees for fire blight, take an extra minute to dip your pruning tool into bleach before each cut and burn infested twigs afterward.
• Practice good sanitation. Under roses, for instance, rake up all old rose leaves in fall and spring. They harbor black spot and other fungus diseases.

Dividing rhizomes or tubers of flowering perennials? Dust the cut part with sulfur to prevent rotting.

The usual antidote for mealybugs on houseplants is to swab each one painstakingly with a Q-tip dipped in alcohol. Save time and energy. Screw a recycled spray top into the alcohol bottle and spray directly.

“I forget white fly, aphids, and all those other things on my houseplants,” says a prolific grower. “Many people are more meticulous than I. I don’t mind bugs. If the infestation gets bad, I never get out the poison sprays. I fill a container with water and a little soap and submerge the whole plant for twenty-four hours.”

Aphids flock to yellow. Fill a yellow dishpan part way with water and set in the garden. Aphids will land on the water and be trapped. They drown and sink.

If fire ants plague you Southern gardeners, pour one inch of Epsom salts in and around their homes.

When insects do get ahead of your plants, you’ll upset natural balances least if you use a botanically derived insecticide. Rotenone, which comes from the roots of two tropical plants, derris and cube, has a drawback. Alas, it kills ladybug larvae as well as the bad guys. Pyrethrum, made from the dried flowers of chrysanthemums, spares ladybugs and bees.

Don’t Coddle Moths — Protect Those Fruit Trees

Protect fruit trees from snails by surrounding their trunks with a three-inch wide collar of copper sheeting one foot above the ground.

Lazy gardeners plan ahead. Control next summer’s codling moth infestation of apple trees. This year, in July, apply a sticky barrier of tanglefoot to apple tree trunks. It will trap codling moth larvae, thereby cutting the population of moths next year.

Catch the ones you missed by hanging a can or two of bait in each tree when apples first begin to develop. Make it with nine parts water, one part molasses, one part honey, and a little yeast.

Change weekly for six weeks.

When you’re itching to plant, but planting season isn’t here yet, use some of that extra energy to spray dormant fruit trees with miscible oil. In early spring, insects that hatch from eggs laid the previous fall are vulnerable because their egg cases and the protective covering of hibernating scales become more porous and allow the spray to penetrate. It covers the potential pests with a film of oil, which suffocates them. Make sure to do this before any buds open.

Take a few minutes to clean up the spring drop from fruit trees to help prevent disease and insect infestation.

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